I learned the Lord’s Prayer in childhood. We used the King James language, and we pronounced the word hallowed with three syllables, like this:
Our Father which art in heaven,
Hal-lo-wed be thy name.
I had no clue what that meant. I suspect, neither did anyone else.
For decades, I thought the essence of the Lord’s Prayer started with the words, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done.” Everything before that seemed like an intro to the actual prayer.
And so for decades, I treated the phrase, “Hallowed be your name,” like a well-rehearsed greeting. That is, whenever I read it or quoted it, I mentally bypassed it.
Then, the year I turned 40, the Lord began to show me those words in a whole new light. He taught me that the part of the prayer I understood least is key to everything else.
How have we missed this prayer?
In Matthew 6:9-13, Jesus said the words we often call “the Lord’s Prayer.” But he didn’t bow his head and pray them. Rather, he looked around, and ahead, and spoke to his followers of all time,
This, then, is how you should pray:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. (ESV)
The Lord designed every word of this prayer to teach us who to pray for, and what to ask for.
What’s more, “Hallowed be your name” is the petition he taught us to pray first.
Was I the only one who had missed that?
As I met with different groups of women, I began to ask them to recall the Lord’s Prayer and then to name the petitions in the prayer.
Each time, different voices would chime in: “Give us our daily bread.” “Your kingdom come.” “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” “Your will be done.” “Lead us not into temptation.” “Deliver us from evil.”
As the voices fell silent, I would ask, “Anything else?”
Everyone looked at me blankly. Every time.
Why don’t we pray it?
Hallowed is not a word any of us sees, or hears, or uses every day.
What’s more, we might pray for a person’s health, job or family, but we don’t generally pray for someone’s name.
Nor do we use the awkward grammatical construction many English versions use here. We don’t say, for example, “Happy be your day.”
And there’s another reason this prayer may seem so incomprehensible to us.
When Jesus taught us to pray, he didn’t wade in slowly. He stepped right out into the deep end, and called for us to come along. Starting with this very first request, the Son taught us to pray for the Father, before we pray for us.1
So what do we do with a prayer that Jesus told us to pray – but our minds can’t seem to grasp, and our emotions can’t seem to embrace?
We turn to the one the Father sent to help us with such things.
How does the Spirit help us?
The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. (John 15:26)
The Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how we should pray, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with inexpressible groanings. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes on behalf of the saints according to God’s will. (Rom. 8:26-28 NET)
The Spirit reminds us what Jesus has said. He shows us what we have not seen.
The Spirit prompts us to search for understanding we do not have. As we seek, wait and trust, he teaches us what we need to know.
And also, the Spirit intercedes on our behalf, so that we can pray, “Hallowed be your name,” even before we understand what we’re asking, or why Jesus said to ask it.
Spirit of Christ, Word of God, would you teach us the prayer we are helpless to know and pray, apart from you?
What in the world are hallowing and profaning?
To hallow can mean “to make holy.” Yet Jesus was not teaching us to pray, “Father, may your name be made holy.”
God’s Name reveals his essence. The names he is called in scripture reflect his character and his ways. Eternally he is holy, holy, holy.
To hallow can also mean “to honor as holy.”2 Ah, this definition sheds more light. Jesus was teaching us to ask:
Father in heaven, may you be treated as the holy God you are.
But what does that look like? Who does it, and how?
Sometimes, the easiest way to understand something is to look at its opposite. In Scripture, the opposite of hallowing is profaning.
To profane is “to violate, as anything sacred; to treat with abuse, irreverence or contempt; to desecrate; to pollute.”3
One day when I had just begun pondering this forgotten prayer, I went for a walk down a rural road near my parents’ house.
The sun shone from a cloudless sky. Temperatures hovered at 75 degrees. A breeze tickled my face. Around a sharp curve, tall oaks arched over the roadway. To my left, a deep-cut stream gurgled. To my right, a sleepy horse grazed.
Yet a setting that should have been idyllic was trashed. All along the roadside, people had thrown beer bottles, six-pack boxes, soft-drink cans and remains of fast-food take-out meals.
As I walked, I realized: God was showing me a picture!
- During my childhood, that property had been “hallowed.” That is, its natural beauty was appreciated and honored.
- The day of my walk, the landscape was violated, polluted, “profaned.”
Who can profane God’s name?
Far beyond any glorious natural setting, God’s character and his ways are breath-taking in their purity and beauty.
To profane God’s name is to desecrate his beauty, to trash his reputation, to violate his glory.
Who would do such a thing? Who could do such a thing?
Tragically, we who identify ourselves with God’s name have the greatest capacity to profane God’s name. We who call God Father have the greatest ability to abuse him.
If Harold’s child does terrible things, I may feel very sad and angry. I may cry for justice and even try to stop the wrongs. But the deeds done by Harold’s child cannot hurt my good name. And yet those deeds can ruin Harold’s name. Those deeds can destroy Harold’s reputation and sabotage great good that Harold is seeking to do.
So too, our lives reflect on our Father in heaven. To the extent that our words and deeds distort and disavow our Father, to that extent we profane his name.
Profanity in action
In Scripture, the Lord identifies ways his people have profaned his name.
Defiant behavior
When the people of Israel were living in their own land, they defiled it by their conduct and their actions. So I poured out my wrath on them because they had shed blood in the land and because they had defiled it with their idols.
I dispersed them among the nations. And wherever they went among the nations they profaned my holy name, for it was said of them, “These are the Lord’s people, and yet they had to leave his land.” (Ezek. 36:17-20)
Today, we misrepresent our Lord when we persist in living from our broken human nature, rather than from our new identity in Christ. We bring contempt on our Father when:
- We worship hidden idols, yet pride ourselves on being the people of God.
- We treat other people badly, collude in doing what God hates and co-opt Scripture to justify it all.
- We live in powerlessness and defeat that is apparent to people outside the faith, even as we work to keep the truth hidden behind a good Christian façade.
Lame worship
When the Lord listed requirements for Old Testament sacrifices, he said,
Do not bring anything with a defect, because it will not be accepted on your behalf.
I am the Lord. Do not profane my holy name, for I must be acknowledged as holy. (Lev. 22:20, 31-32)
Centuries later, God cried:
I am sick of your sacrifices. Don’t bring me any more of them. Who wants your sacrifices when you have no sorrow for your sins? The incense you bring me is a stench in my nostrils. Your holy celebrations – even your most pious meetings – all are frauds! I want nothing more to do with them. I hate them all; I can’t stand the sight of them. (Isa. 1:11-14 TLB)
Today, God is still repulsed by “worship” that does not flow from lives wholly yielded to him.
Broken trust
Near the end of their 40-year wanderings, the Israelites complained because they had no water. Here’s what happened:
Moses and Aaron went from the assembly to the entrance to the tent of meeting and fell facedown, and the glory of the Lord appeared to them.
The Lord said to Moses, “Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink.”
So Moses took the staff from the Lord’s presence, just as he commanded him. He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?”
Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.
But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.” (Num. 20:6-12)
Even when we know the Lord well and love him deeply, we may get fed up with how he is handling things, and opt to do it our own way. We may designate ourselves someone else’s savior. We may take credit that belongs to God alone.
Such behavior can be catastrophic for us and for anyone we’re trying to “help.”
What’s more, it betrays our Lord’s trust. It profanes his name.
Who can hallow God’s name?
The first prayer in the Lord’s Prayer is the key that unlocks the whole prayer.
The dilemma we all face
As we seek to know the Lord intimately,
we also begin to reflect his character and his ways.
As we thus begin to hallow him,
we seek his kingdom and his will, above our own.
Only then, can we draw near with confidence
to ask him to “give us,” “forgive us,” “lead us” and “deliver us.”
Only then, can we receive
all he stands ready to give.
Yet who among us has not behaved in ways that deeply dishonor God?
So where does that leave us? If the Lord has a no-tolerance policy with regard to Father abuse – if he allows no imperfect offerings and excuses no sins – who can hallow his name?
The God who makes a way
In Ezekiel 36, God says:
I had concern for my holy name, which the people of Israel profaned among the nations where they had gone.
I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Sovereign Lord, when I am proved holy through you before their eyes.” (vv. 21, 23)
In this stunning passage, God promises to hallow his own name through the very children who have rejected his ways and trampled his reputation.
How will he do that?
The wonder of being made new
Sometimes – when all other options have been exhausted – the Lord uses scathing judgments to demonstrate his holiness. But such judgments gives him no pleasure, and that is not what he’s promising here.
Sometimes God honors his own name through works of power – miracles, signs, wonders. But glorious outward demonstrations are not what he’s promising here.
In this passage, our Lord promises astounding inner transformation:
I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. (vv. 25-27)
Yes! Oh yes! Our Father has promised:
I will clean up my reputation by cleaning up my children. I will reveal my holiness to a watching world by pouring out amazing grace on my people, profoundly changing them so their lives truly reflect me.
What the Father promised, he has accomplished through his Son. What the Father promised, he is accomplishing by his Spirit.
Jesus Christ became the perfect sacrifice, offering himself in our place. He gave himself up for us to make us holy.4
God the Spirit indwells us, fills us, impregnates us with desires we otherwise cannot have and births in us what we otherwise cannot produce.
In the Son, by the Spirit, we hallow the Father’s name.
Hallowing in action
We hallow our Father’s name as we present ourselves wholly to him.
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship. (Rom. 12:1)
We hallow our Father’s name as we live changed lives that honor him. Walking by the Spirit, we become like Levi, whom God described this way in Malachi 2:5-6:
He revered me and stood in awe of my name. True instruction was in his mouth and nothing false was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and turned many from sin.
We hallow our Father’s name as we seek him above all else.
Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your laws, we wait for you; your name and renown are the desire of our hearts. (Isa. 26:8)
This, then, is how you should pray
We who are identified with God’s name have the greatest capacity to profane his name. We also have the supernatural capacity to hallow his name, by reflecting his character and his ways.
What determines whether we live our lives abusing our Father or glorifying him? What shifts us into the amazing flow of grace promised in Ezekiel 36?
Isaiah declared:
The Lord longs to be gracious to you. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when He hears it, He will answer you. (Isa. 30:18, 19 NAS)
Jesus said, “This, then, is how you should pray.” Then he taught us what cries the Lord longs to hear, what cries release his astounding promises of grace.
You who call God Father, remember what Jesus taught us to pray first. Invite his Spirit to ignite your spirit, releasing that prayer deep within.
Press into this prayer even when you do not see its practical value. Know in your inmost being that praying for God’s name matters more than you can possibly know. Keep sounding the cry, in whatever words he gives.
May you be treated as the holy God you are.
So transform your people that we reflect who you truly are.
“Let my heart overflow with passion for Your name.
Let my life be a song, revealing who You are.”5
Father in heaven. Hallowed. Be your name.
In March 1994, God began showing me the forgotten prayer within the Lord’s Prayer. I’ve been writing about it ever since, including: a Key Truths e-column in 2009, and a blog post published May 22, 2017. This is my second repost of that blog post, as I continue to revisit this inexhaustible subject, and to gain new insights into the prayer Jesus taught us to pray first.
Image by Joshua Woroniecki from Pixabay
Other posts in the Praying for God series
See also
- Heartcry of one who overcomes
- See! I am doing a new thing
- A sign and a wonder: The amazing grace cycle
- Humble your soul, release your spirit
- Prepare to meet with God
- The blessing of the Lord
Footnotes
- That thought may be jarring, if you’ve never considered it. So please, if you’re the least bit curious, or skeptical, see the post, Praying for God. ↩︎
- Definitions of “hallow” are from BibleSoft, NT:37. Greek Englilsh Lexicon Based on Semantic Domain. Copyright (c) 1988 United Bible Societies, New York. Used by permission. ↩︎
- Definition of “profane” is from Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary. ↩︎
- See Ephesians 5:25-27. ↩︎
- From the song, Salt & Light, by Lauren Daigle. ↩︎
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